With a profound respect for the environment, Iranian artist Ahmad Nadalian has etched thousands of stones with images of fish, crabs, faces, hands and feet which he then buries in the earth or tosses into bodies of water around the world. Thousands of stones, small and large.

Nadalian also carves cylinder seals and uses them in his worldwide quest to bring awareness to environmental issues. Cylinder seals are stone, glass or ceramic cylinders that were engraved with a story and used in ancient times to roll an impression of the images onto clay.

The hand-carved cylinder seals boast simple images of ocean and river life. The artist rolls these seals along the sandy beaches of the world’s oceans, often leaving the seal at the site of the sand print for the waters to wash away to another shore, in honor of the fisherman who might find it someday.

Susan Lomuto